The Brawl Before Christmas
by theredrobin
Summary: Everyone has their secrets. Cyborg is forced to reveal one of his own to his friends when the Christmas festivities go awry.
1. Tis the Season

Author's Notes

Just a short holiday story.

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**Chapter 1, 'Tis the Season**

* * *

It was Christmas Eve in Jump City, and the stragglers were rushing to finish up their shopping, looking for those last few gifts that always seemed to be forgotten until the last minute. People bustled up and down the crowded sidewalks outside department stores and outlets that were packed to bursting. Cars with children and luggage in tow were stuck in gridlock both on their way in and out of the city.

Only one place remained untouched by the frenzy that was congesting all of downtown. Titans Tower sat isolated from the rest of the city, surrounded on all sides by foamy, brackish waves which lapped against the rocks.

The edges of the window panes were iced over from the bitter cold that had enveloped the city. In the common room, dusty boxes were scattered all over the carpet, their contents spilling out as if someone had searched through them in a hurry.

Raven sat on the sofa with her cowl down, a thick book in her hands, a blanket on her lap, and a steaming cup of peppermint tea beside her on the coffee table. She flicked her eyes up. It had been quiet for a very long time, long enough for her to wonder where everyone was, and after another moment or two of unsettling silence, she reached out with her powers to search them out.

She found Robin first; he was going over dossiers in his office. Starfire was in her room tending to Silkie. Raven's brow furrowed. She couldn't sense Cyborg or Beast Boy anywhere inside the Tower. She extended her mind to probe the area around the city, and came across them at last just outside of the city.

Vaguely, she recalled their discussion last night about chopping down a tree from the woods "the old fashioned way." Apparently, they were serious. Not entirely sure they were allowed to be doing that, Raven took a sip of her tea and went back to reading.

It wasn't too much later when the common room door swished open to reveal a mass of pine needles. Cyborg pushed in an enormous fir tree before him as he entered the common room, swinging it over his shoulder to haul it in after passing it through the doorframe.

Beast Boy marched in after Cyborg, beaming. He slipped off his coat, threw it down on the floor, and started to sing. "_It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas_—!"

"Well that's good, since it _is_ Christmas Eve and all," deadpanned Raven.

Beast Boy was about to pout, but it changed into a smile when he caught sight of her. Raven still had the little sprig of holly stuck behind her ear where he had placed it earlier that morning, like she was part of the room needing to be decorated. Oddly enough, after looking up from her book to give him a withering look, she had made no motion to remove it. Cyborg had noticed too. He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Once upright and in the stand, the tree was so tall that it brushed the ceiling. Beast Boy wasted no time before morphing into an octopus and using all eight legs to start draping ornaments on the branches.

"Take it easy, grass stain," Cyborg called out from under the tree, still adjusting the stand. "Didn't you learn your lesson last year about decorating in animal form? Your record for broken ornaments was seven. That's not a quota; don't do it again."

Beast Boy reverted back to his human shape. "Fine," he sulked. Then his eyes lit up. "Oh, I almost forgot!"

He took off towards a corner of the room and started rummaging through one of the many boxes filled with ornaments and trinkets. From the bottommost box, he pulled out something that was wrapped in tissue paper.

Raven eyed him from the sofa, and Beast Boy caught her eye, grinning wickedly. "Mistletoe."

Cyborg snorted.

Last year, Beast Boy hung mistletoe all over the Tower, but Robin had been dogging his steps and tearing it all down, hissing at Beast Boy for 'potentially instigating awkward moments between team members.' Which of course led to Starfire asking her friends how exactly 'the greenery of mistle' could cause friction between them all.

None of them had ever seen Robin blush before that moment.

Raven rolled her eyes and turned a page while Beast Boy morphed into a hummingbird and stuck the branch of mistletoe in the ceiling right beside the Christmas tree.

As Beast Boy had already done most of the work, Cyborg decided to do his share. Crawling out from under the tree, he activated his arm console and spoke into the built-in communicator. "Starfire, Robin, get into the common room and come decorate the tree before Beast Boy does it all himself."

Beast Boy smothered his laughter as best he could as Robin and Starfire both answered they were on their way. Even Raven's mouth twitched and she put her book down to help deck out the tree.

Starfire flew into the common room followed closely by Robin. "What a glorious tree! It is even larger than the one we had last year." With that she floated over to the nearest box and started arranging little silver snowflakes across the branches.

Robin watched Starfire with a smile on his face. Cyborg, Raven, and Beast Boy all looked at him furtively as they stuck to one side of the tree. The side opposite of the mistletoe.

"Robin," Raven said carefully, "why don't you help Starfire decorate that half of the tree? The three of us are taking care of this side."

"Sure, no problem," Robin shrugged.

He was oblivious as Cyborg and Beast Boy's jaws dropped open. Was Raven was actually helping them?

It was quiet as the tree became fuller with baubles, tinsel, and strings of lights. Robin and Starfire were unwittingly inching closer and closer to the spot right beneath the mistletoe.

Robin finally stepped under the mistletoe as he hung a ruby-red bird on a branch. Starfire, meanwhile, had floated just above him to a bare part of the tree that was up higher than any of them could reach standing on the ground. As she drifted upwards, Starfire felt something tickle the top of her head lightly and she turned to see what it was.

The mistletoe.

Starfire hadn't understood last year what this plant meant for the people of Earth, or why it made Robin so uncomfortable, but she had asked Raven, and now she knew exactly what it was. She looked down and saw Robin below her, still positioning ornaments.

Did she dare?

Well, it was an Earth custom.

Landing lightly, Starfire stood beside Robin and studied his profile for a moment. Feeling her gaze upon him, Robin turned to look at her and gave her a quizzical half-smile. She smiled too. Then she took his hand in hers and looked up slowly with only her eyes. Robin tilted his head back to follow her line of sight. His mouth went dry.

Starfire drew closer to him, her eyes falling closed. He watched her come towards him, unable to move himself. It was dead silent on the other side of the tree.

The Titans alarm blared to life.

Starfire's eyes flew open and Robin hesitated for a second before tearing his eyes away and running to the computer to see what the disturbance was.

As the others joined him in front of the screen, they saw that there was an incoming video-message.

On the large screen appeared a battered older man in a tattered and bloodied lab coat. His mouth was moving, but his words were barely audible over the commotion heard but unseen in the background and the static that practically cancelled out the video feed. The man continued to shout, and though his message was garbled, his plea for help was clear. The static was becoming more erratic and they could only just make him out.

"…experiment…mistake…help…_Victor_…."

Then the feed went dead.

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Beast Boy spoke up. "So I guess my famous tofu-nog will have to wait, eh?"

The others only looked at him before Raven gave him a smack to the back of the head. "We should hurry," she said. "That man didn't look like he could hold off whatever is attacking him for much longer."

"I'm tracking the coordinates of that transmission right now," Robin replied as he rapped away at the keyboard.

Starfire wrung her hands together, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion and worry. "Perhaps that message was not intended for us. Who is this Victor he spoke of?"

A muffled thump came from behind them, and they jerked around to see what had caused it.

Cyborg was leaning heavily on the sofa. His expression was unreadable as he looked up to take in the faces of his bewildered friends.

"That would be me," he said in a cracked voice, his mouth set into a grim line. "And that man is Dr. Silas Stone—my father."


	2. A Cyborg's Tale

Author's Notes

Part two of three.

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**Chapter 2, A Cyborg's Tale**

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"What?" spluttered Beast Boy.

The others were dead silent and tense as they watched Cyborg, waiting for him to say something more.

Cyborg just stared down at his hands, lost in his thoughts. _What in God's name could have happened that the old man's become desperate enough to try and contact me now? How did he even know where to reach me at all?_

He didn't move until a slender, gloved hand place itself over his own knotted fingers.

"Please, Cyborg," Starfire said in a gentle voice, "why have you never before told us of your family?"

His face had been blank until Starfire spoke. Now, it twisted into a horrible snarl that they had never seen him adopt before, and he burst out savagely, "He may be my father, but he is _not_ my family."

Starfire kept her hand atop his, continuing to watch him with eyes brimming with concern. Cyborg still wouldn't look at the others. He was dreading to see their stares of worry. Or pity.

He cleared his throat. "C'mon, we should go."

With that, he strode out of the room. The others followed quickly.

-T-

The five Titans were quiet as Cyborg revved the engine of the T-Car to life and sped away from the Tower and beyond the Jump City limits. They stayed quiet as he maneuvered his way down twisting roads none of them had ever been down before, but he drove along them so smoothly that they were sure the same could not be said of him. The only exchanges between any of them were apprehensive glances among the three Titans in the backseat.

It had begun to flurry while they were decorating the tree, but the snowfall was becoming thicker and heavier as the T-Car went farther and farther north.

An hour into the drive, Robin couldn't stand it anymore. He almost laughed at the situation he found himself in. _He_ was the one who was usually brooding and reclusive.

"Cyborg?"

No response. No acknowledgement of any kind.

"C'mon, Cyborg," Beast Boy tried from the backseat, putting a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Talk to us."

"We…we only wish to help you. Perhaps sharing your burden with us will help alleviate it?"

"Starfire's right," Raven said in a rare, gentle tone. "We're your friends."

Another few seconds passed, heavy with silence.

Then Cyborg just started talking.

"Back when I was known as Victor Stone, when I was fully human, I lived with my mom and dad, Silas and Elinore Stone. I wasn't happy, exactly, but I had some good things in my life: sports, my friends, a girlfriend. I was normal."

Beast Boy, Raven, and Robin had never heard about Cyborg's life before becoming a Titan. Starfire had only spoken with him about it in passing after he infiltrated the H.I.V.E. Academy. They all sat looking at him now with their full attention.

"My_ father_," he spat out the word like it was bitter on his tongue, "destroyed all of it in the blink of an eye. My parents were scientists. They mastered almost every field of science known to man; so, they started research in a few that weren't. Tampering with alternate dimensions. Dabbling in alchemy. God only knows what else. They were always experimenting, always pushing their limits, and disaster was bound to happen one day. There were just consequences I hadn't seen coming."

Cyborg stopped speaking. Raven could feel the anger and grief radiating from him as he tried to rein in his emotions.

"My parents went too far. They were stubborn and reckless. I'm sure they both thought they were invincible when it came to their beloved science. I…I tried to stop them, but it was too late. One of their devices was too unstable, and something escaped from whatever damn dimension spawned it and ripped through the lab, killing…killing my mother." He swallowed roughly as the vision of his one human eye was blurred by tears.

Robin dimly wondered if _any_ of their parents had been good, were still alive. Starfire's hands were covering her mouth in horror and her own green eyes filled with tears.

Beast Boy was frowning as he stared out the window into the swirling snow, trying to recall something. A memory was nagging in the back of his mind, as if he had heard something like this before.

Then it hit him. That terrible day of Trigon's resurrection, when Cyborg had been fighting his Inner-Demon, Beast Boy overheard its taunts.

"_You gonna go crying to your mommy? Oh…that's right. You don't have a mommy."_

With everything that was happening, Beast Boy had completely forgotten about it. Now the significance of the words struck him with the force of lightning.

"So my mother was dead, but I didn't know because I was as good as killed myself." He gave a hollow laugh. "My father, though, decided he wasn't about to lose both of us—he made me into _this_." Cyborg gestured spitefully at himself. "Once I saw what he had done to me…what had happened to mom…I left him back at his precious S.T.A.R. Labs and never looked back. I haven't heard from him since."

He finished talking as abruptly as he had started.

-T-

Cyborg turned the T-Car turned off the dirt road and rumbled over a gravel path. The pebbly terrain led into the woods. After squeezing through a narrow trail, they came upon an enclosure that must have been near the heart of the wood.

It was actually quite pretty, between the snow and the oak trees. They found it hard to imagine that this was the scene of something as horrible as the video-message from Silas had seemed to be…that is, until they came upon the sight just beyond the glade.

"We're here."


	3. STAR Labs

Author's Notes

Balkoth, thanks for the tips; I really appreciate it.

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**Chapter 3, S.T.A.R. Labs**

* * *

Cyborg hit the brakes and switched off the engine.

He and the others piled out of the T-Car and cautiously approached the smoldering ruins of what was clearly once an impressive building. Dust and debris were clogging the air around it. Bricks and cracked concrete were lying all over the snow in uneven chunks. One slab bore the words _S.T.A.R. Labs_ in faded navy lettering. Apart from the crackling sound of severed wires that were still live and jumping with high-voltage electricity, the place was eerily quiet.

Cyborg only took a few steps before he standing frozen before the building. Years of memories flooded his brain, making his head swim.

Beast Boy started to approach him, but Starfire stopped him with a touch of her hand to his elbow.

Robin carefully approached the gaping hole in collapsing lab, but was forced to jump back and shield his face with an arm as a pair of wires jolted and emitted sparks. "Raven, do you think you could—?"

Raven nodded before closing her eyes to focus on summoning her dark energy. Her magic rose from the snow-covered ground and enveloped her and her friends to bring them safely inside.

The Titans crouched in the shadows, using the darkness as a cloak. Robin crept along the wall against his back and peered around the corner. He couldn't see a thing in the dim light given off from flickering bulbs overhead.

"Shall I ignite one of my starbolts to aid us in our search?" Starfire offered in a whisper.

"No, not just yet. As much as I'd like a clear sight of what we're getting into, it'll attract attention." He flicked his eyes around the dark hallway in thought before turning back to his teammates. "Beast Boy, go on ahead to scope out the area and give us the all clear."

Beast Boy's body shrank as he turned into a fly.

"Come right back if you run into any sign of trouble," Robin said in the general direction of where Beast Boy's dark outline had been a moment earlier. The dull buzz of Beast Boy's wings faded as he moved down the passage.

Cyborg had been strangely mute since they had arrived. Raven sensed the mixed emotions he was giving off as they waited for Beast Boy to come back. Starfire groped blindly for his hand and felt him squeeze her fingers slightly.

Minutes ticked by, and still Beast Boy had not returned. They couldn't hear him at all now.

Raven was starting to become rather fidgety when Beast Boy's panicked voice rang down the hallway. "Guys, over here! Hurry up!"

The others bolted towards the sound of his voice, Cyborg and Robin's feet pounding on metallic surface of the floor while Raven and Starfire took to the air. They went on that way for what seemed like ages before two dark masses appeared in the center of the area just ahead of them.

Beast Boy come into view. He was kneeling by a dark heap on the floor. "Cyborg," he began, "it's—"

"Dad!" Cyborg yelled.

With a burst of speed he sprinted over to his father's motionless body. Cyborg looked upon Silas's unconscious face. It had been years since he'd last seen him after storming away from this very lab and time had not been kind to his father. A grayish stubble shadowed Silas's sunken cheeks and the bags under his eyes were hollow and dark. There were scrapes, bruises, and dried blood peppered all over him, making him look even shabbier.

Starfire ignited a starbolt so Cyborg could have light to see his father better, though everything was discolored by the green glow it cast, and oddly enough much of the area seemed to…glimmer.

Raven extended a glowing hand over Dr. Stone's chest to heal as many of his injuries as she could. None of them seemed to be life-threatening at least.

"These don't look like they're from a direct attack," Robin said studying Silas as Raven healed him. He glancing around the damaged lab. "They're like shrapnel wounds."

Cyborg tore his gaze from his father and looked around at the ruined, green-lit area with a hard glint in his eye. Glass was shattered on the floor and huge chunks of the walls had been completely torn away. And there was still that strange, shiny quality about the place.

Silas began to stir.

Cyborg's attention swiveled instantly back to his father as he emitted a low groan and blinked his eyes open. Groggy and clearly still dazed, it seemed to take him a few moments before his vision cleared enough to see.

"Victor?" Dr. Stone said, doubtfully at first and then with more certainty. "Victor, you came."

"What have you done this time?" Cyborg asked harshly.

Before Silas could even open his mouth to answer, a high-pitched scraping noise rent the air.

"Quickly, to the panic-room!" Dr. Stone ordered, regaining his wits and shepherding the confused Titans down the corridor. He whipped to look at a startled Starfire. "And child, please put that light out!"

Her starbolt dissipated.

"What did you do?" Cyborg repeated, but he hurried along beside his father as the scraping sound grew closer and shriller, seeming to come from everywhere at once as the noise bounced and echoed along the pitch-black halls. Something was clearly in pursuit of them.

"Not now," his father yelled back. "Come this way." Turning into another passage, he led the Titans into a small room, shutting and barring the heavy iron doors behind them.

"Emergency power cell protocol, activate," Silas spoke aloud, and immediately the room was flooded with light.

Squinting into the sudden brightness, the Titans peered around this new room. Their jaws dropped. They now saw what was once hidden by the darkness and disguised by the green light Starfire had been casting.

Gold.

They were surrounded by gold. Golden objects lay scattered, and some destroyed as well, all over the room. It was as though someone had dipped a random assortment of tech and equipment into a vat of liquid gold.

While Robin, Starfire, Raven, and Beast Boy gawked, Cyborg only had eyes for his father. "You have some nerve calling me for help after everything you've done. Do you want to explain what the hell going on?"

Dr. Stone stared into his son's eyes for a moment, then he let out a sigh. "For several months now, I've been testing out the possibility of alchemy—with tremendous breakthroughs. I actually discovered a way to recreate something which people have coveted for millennia: the Hand of Midas. The legends said it could transform any item it touched into solid gold, and when I realized I had discovered a way to recreate it…." He rubbed his eyes wearily.

"Unfortunately, it was only yesterday that I recognized a serious flaw in my calculations that if left unattended could prove to be treacherous. Before I could destroy it, the Hand of Midas mutated into this massive, monstrous beast with a will of its own. With its ability to convert anything into gold, the thing is fatal for anyone who touches it. I…I didn't know what to do once it started to demolish the lab and pursue me. I turned to the only place I knew I could find help—you, the Titans."

"I can't believe you," Cyborg ground out. "After everything that's happened—after mom died—how could you possibly continue to be so careless? Just because you can, doesn't mean you should!"

"You didn't seem to mind it so much when I built Titans Tower," Dr. Stone replied evenly.

Starfire gasped.

"_What_?" Cyborg managed to choke out.

His mind was whirring. He and Robin had been led to believe that Jump City had the tower constructed for Titans as a thank you for saving them from the Gordanian attack and as an invitation to be their official protectors.

Dr. Stone took advantage of his son's silence and attention. "I was a wreck when you left, Victor. I knew I couldn't force you to stay, so I supported your new life the only way I could. You never would have accepted the Tower if you knew I had anything to do with it, so I never told you," he finished with a sad little smile.

"Dad," Cyborg started. He had tried so hard to forget his father, but his father had never forgotten him. "Dad, I—"

A thunderous bang resounded from the panic-room door.

What none of them had realized while they so focused on Cyborg and Silas was that t the iron door was now solid gold. The ear-splitting clang of metal on metal shook the room again. The third boom brought the door—now made of soft gold—blasting off its hinges with absurd ease.

In the clear doorway stood a bizarre sight. A gold-plated hand at least seven feet in height from wrist to fingertips stood on its middle and index fingers almost like a pair of legs. It had no eyes that anyone could see, but they somehow knew that this thing sensed their presence. It crept forward on its fingers like a curious hand-puppet, sending the Titans and Dr. Stone retreating farther backwards into the recesses of the panic-room.

Dr. Stone spoke urgently and quietly. "Don't let it touch you."

"How can we stop something that we can't even hit?" Beast Boy muttered as he backed away from the creature.

"Any way we can," Robin responded. He reached into his utility-belt and removed a fistful of birdarangs. Taking aim, he flicked his wrist to release them with deadly accuracy at the thing. They bounced harmlessly off of the hand in a shower of gold. It had, however, gotten the beast's attention.

The hand seemed to vibrate with fury slightly as it bull-rushed Robin.

Starfire sent starbolts crashing into the creature to subdue it, but they had no effect. Neither did Raven's magic, and by that time it was inches from Robin. At the last possible second, he flipped to the side to avoid being touched so that the hand went crashing into the wall. Chunks of plaster and dust flew everywhere.

Cyborg protected himself and his father from the cracked beams that had buckled from the hit by reducing them to sawdust with his sonic cannon.

"Dad," he shouted, "there has to be something you can do to stop it. It's an unstable experiment. There's always a way to dismantle them."

"Dismantle it?" Dr. Stone repeated, a strange glint in his eyes. "_Dismantle_ it. We can break it down, that's it! Victor, can you all lead it into the main chamber? Leave the rest to me."

"You got it."

Dr. Stone slipped past the hand while it was distracted with the others and ran.

"I feel like we're herding sheep," Beast Boy snickered as he backed away from the rearing, vibrating hand. He changed into a Labrador, barking and wagging his tail.

Raven rolled her eyes. "Is this really the time for you to be working on your standup material?"

It wasn't easy, but the Titans managed to alternately drive back and lure the creature into the main chamber with nearly everything in their path turning to gold.

As they continued to try and subdue the monster, Dr. Stone was tinkering with an elaborate-looking device. "That's it!" he encouraged them. "When I say so, give it everything you've got. Ready? Now!"

In a blinding flash of sonic-cannon fire, magic, explosives, and starbolts, the hand was overpowered long enough that it fell to the ground in a shaking heap. It was all the time Dr. Stone needed to fire from the atomic subverter he had rewired to destabilize the element Au—gold.

The thing was pierced by the subverter's ray straight-on and started to disintegrate. Weakened and already unstable in its mutagenic composition, it quaked violently once more before melting completely into a bubbling heap of molten gold in the middle of the floor.

"We are victorious!" Starfire clapped and giggled a little.

Through the thinning smoke and debris, Cyborg turned to face his father and Dr. Stone met his gaze. Without exchanging another word, the two crossed the room to embrace just as the sun broke over the horizon.

"It's Christmas, you guys!" Beast Boy declared. "Let's go back home and party. My tofu-nog is calling."

"Oh, yes!" Starfire cried. Floating closer to Robin, she whispered so only he could hear her next words. "Perhaps when we return, we can properly practice this custom of standing under the mistletoe greenery at last."

Robin swung his head to look at her so fast that he pulled a muscle in his neck.

Cyborg muttered past the lump in his throat, "Merry Christmas, Dad."

"Merry Christmas, Victor. I've missed you."

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End Author's Notes

Best wishes to everyone this holiday season!


End file.
